Best Flagship Smartphones of 2024 in India

It is time to reflect on the year gone by and the best it had to offer. As usual, we start with the premium-most smartphones that were launched in India this year. Each phone offers some AI tricks but the true battle of AI is still another year away. In this article, we have shortlisted a handful of performance powerhouses that truly raised the camera bar this year, price being a non-factor. Most of them may not be hard to guess barring one. It’s time to meet the absolute best flagship smartphones of 2024.

Best Flagship Smartphones of 2024

Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max

The premium-most model from the latest iPhone 16 series is also probably the largest iPhone ever. While the biggest novelty, Apple Intelligence, is conspicuous by its absence this year, the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max remains a performance powerhouse even without it, making it one of the best smartphones in the country at the moment. And not that iOS 18 doesn’t have any AI based features at all, just that they are expected to get better in 2025.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is powered by Apple’s latest A18 Pro chip, which is a beast and yet energy efficient. It is powerful enough for anything you throw at it, and along with the six-core GPU, it is great for gaming too. You have NVMe storage options ranging from 256 GB to 1 TB. The 6.9-inch display is the largest on an iPhone ever. It is sharp, bright and vivid, and the company has retained the pixel density by increasing the resolution just a little bit. Even better, it has slightly slimmer bezels than its predecessor.

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The photography department is led by a 48MP Fusion Camera for the main lens that does a great job in varied lighting. The telephoto camera seems to have been carried forward from the 15 Pro series, but its performance gives us no reason to complain. The ultra-wide camera on the 16 Pro Max gets an upgrade. You now get a 48MP unit with PDAF that excels in ultra-wide as well as macro photography. You can now record excellent and stabilised 4K videos at up to 120 fps, which means some great slow motion 4K clips too. And did I mention the new Camera Control button that’s more than handy?

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

The Ultra variant of the Samsung Galaxy S24 series remains a total package among Android smartphones. From raw performance to a super-impressive photography department to the versatility of the S Pen, this is a true flagship device in every sense. This year, Samsung may not have opted for groundbreaking upgrades over the S23 Ultra, but they’ve certainly refined an already exceptional product.

The improved telephoto camera, a faster Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor and the promise of seven years of software updates, among other things, make it a notable upgrade. Performance-wise, it handles everything effortlessly, be it day-to-day apps or gaming or AI tasks like photo editing, without overheating or lag. It has a large and vivid 6.8-inch QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2x display with HDR10+ compliance and 120 Hz refresh rate.

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The photography department here is helmed by a 200MP primary camera with multi-directional PDAF and OIS. Giving it company is a 10MP telephoto camera with OIS for 3X optical zoom and the second 10MP periscope telephoto camera for 5X optical zoom has now been upgraded to a 50MP unit. There’s also a 12MP ultra-wide camera with dual-pixel PDAF. The cameras do a stellar job across the board in photography and videography both and can record videos in up to 8K resolution.

Choice of internal storage ranges between 256 GB to 1 TB. The phone runs OneUI 6.1 based on Android 14, and as I mentioned earlier, you can expect seven more years of OS and security updates, keeping this device secure and relevant for a long time. With most bases covered, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is easily among the best phones of 2024.

Google Pixel 9 Pro/ XL

Till the launch of the Pixel 9 series, one had to choose between the compact footprint of the non-Pro variant of the Pixel or a much larger Pro variant with extra features. The Google Pixel 9 Pro gives you the best of both worlds - all the Pro features in the Pixel 9 size, and we love that. Of course, if you prefer larger screens, you can always opt the Pixel 9 Pro XL. Unlike the iPhone 16 Pro series, the battery impact between the two Pro models here is minimal.

Powered by Google’s flagship Tensor G4 processor, it comes with ample 16 GB RAM and 256 GB internal storage to go with it. It sports a sharp 6.3-inch LTPO OLED display with HDR10+ compliance, 2856 x 1280 pixels resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate and 3000 nits peak brightness. The screen size and the hand feel of this phone are just perfect in our opinion, and in a world of bloating screen and phone sizes, compact flagships remain a breath of fresh air.

As you expect from Pixel phones, you get the purest version of Android 15 with the Material You design language, and now with a tighter Gemini integration for some AI magic. Just like Samsung, Google too promises an incredible seven years of OS and security updates for the Pixel 9 series. Other than speedy OS updates, Pixel phones are known for their camera capabilities, and the Pixel 9 Pro is among the very best camera phones around.

You get a 50MP primary camera with dual-pixel PDAF and OIS and a 48MP ultra-wide camera with 123-degrees FOV and dual-pixel PDAF that lets you capture some excellent macro shots in addition to its primary functionality. And let’s not forget that excellent 48MP periscope telephoto camera with OIS that provides you with 5X optical zoom. The cameras do a stellar job across different lightings and modes. We expect the Pixel 9 Pro/ XL to get even better with time.

Vivo X200 Pro

Vivo’s photography game has been going up steadily over the past few years, especially with their X series phones. They have been knocking on the doors of this list for the last year or two, and this time, they have knocked the door down with the Vivo X200 Pro. Not only is it a great camera phone but, dare I say, even better than the above superstars of the industry in certain cases. Just competing with them is an achievement but beating them is something else.

For the record, the photography department on the X200 Pro, assisted by Zeiss optics, comprises a 50MP primary camera with Sony’s LYT-818 sensor, one of the most versatile 200MP periscope telephoto cameras with Zeiss colour correction and a 50MP ultra-wide camera. Collectively with Vivo’s V3+ image processor, they do a phenomenal job across the board, be it regular, low-light, macro photography or some great portrait shots and more. And the video quality compares to that of the latest iPhones. Need we say more?

While that would have been enough to convince users, Vivo hasn’t left other bases uncovered either. The X200 Pro is powered by a flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chip with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB storage and has one of the best displays around. In addition, its 6000 mAh battery provides ample battery backup and charges briskly. While the above phones offer IP68 ingress protection, the X200 Pro gets IP69 rating which lets you do some underwater photography too. All of this puts the Vivo X200 Pro in the pantheons of the best smartphones of 2024.